


The Murmuring of Bees Has Ceased

by gritkitty



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-22
Updated: 2005-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:05:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gritkitty/pseuds/gritkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jack would have liked nothing better than to give Stephen the world, but bees it was that motivated him and so the bees Jack must tolerate."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Murmuring of Bees Has Ceased

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Giddy Geek

 

 

Jack's eye fell upon the coffeepot and he ignored all his superior intentions as he reached for it, hearing Stephen's hand on the door and knowing full well only a cup remained, still steaming and fragrant. He would have left an equal amount of bacon, but he knew by heart all of Stephen's lectures on the evils of overeating. Better to assume he would prefer less, though Jack thought more bacon might do Stephen good. In the unspoken truce since their quarrel Jack hoped more bacon, more coffee, more apes to observe -- different climates, different shores -- anything might liven the yellowed face before him now. Jack poured the last of the pot into Stephen's cup. 'Coffee?'

He replied with an incoherent noise and his outstretched hand. A curl of steam from the cup brought forth a glimmer of humanity in him; by the last noisy gulp both eyes were open and he said, 'My bees are calm this morning, recovered fully from the mayhem of yesterday and ready to forage for their daily cocoa.'

Jack would have liked nothing better than to give Stephen the world, but bees it was that motivated him and so the bees Jack must tolerate. 'The cannon fire didn't make 'em shy, eh?'

'Not a bit of it,' Stephen said as he piled his plate, all of the bacon now his. 'Adaptable creatures to the last one.'

'Damned lucky monsters,' Jack reflected privately. Bees he must tolerate, but he hoped Providence -- or a French cannonball -- might relinquish the need; however, Stephen's glass hive showed uncanny luck to survive tight quarters, rough seas, and cannon fire. The _Lively_ continued to improve her gunnery, however, and that prospect softened Jack's attitude about the bees, even if he could think of nothing kind to say about them; happily, there was a knock at the door: a sail had been sighted.

'Two, sir,' said Simmons, pointing before he offered his own glass. 'I took them for nothing more than local fishing craft, but I think they're trying to catch us.'

Jack steadied the glass and looked. 'Three.' He closed it smartly and handed it back. 'And they are catching us.'

The first lieutenant observed them again, squinting against the eyepiece. 'They sail quickly enough, but none is hardly more than a cockle-shell. What would induce a rag-tag collection like that to approach a frigate?'

Jack smiled. 'We shall know soon enough when they catch us.'

'Orders, sir?'

'No need to make it easy for them,' Jack said. 'Stay the course and call me if they make good their threat.'

At the table Stephen sipped from a full cup with every appearance of intense pleasure. A platter of chops and steam from the pot confirmed that Killick had recently come and gone again, and Jack filled both plate and cup feeling nothing but virtue for his altruism earlier and amusement for the _Lively's_ pursuers now. He told Stephen of them as he ate.

'Surely they do not approach us to sell us fish or supplies.' Stephen set down his cup. 'Where could they have come from?'

'Cherbourg is the closest town, though Cap Lvy is not far behind us and Cap de la Hague not much farther ahead.' Jack speared another chop. 'As to their motivation, as I told Mr Simmons, we will find out soon enough. Just ask 'em when they get here.'

'There are reasons why one might approach the enemy in such a way.'

'In such a foolish way?'

'In a way not to arouse challenge,' Stephen tapped his fingers on the table. 'Discreet.'

'If discretion was their intent, they might have considered the advantages of midnight over midmorning to bother us,' replied Jack. 'Most likely they follow us to see when we turn north.'

'Curious Frenchmen tracking your movement along their shore.' Stephen sipped then continued. 'It is one form of gathering intelligence.'

Jack resettled his weight in his chair, unhappy to be reminded of the insult that still ghosted between them and, though put behind them, was never spoken of. He had missed his most opportune chance to speak of it days and days ago; now he tried to look forward, when time might finish what he never could.

'One form among many. Could they be anything but French?'

'No.' In his mind Jack saw again the boats, their rigging and how they sailed. 'If you would be so kind as to speak to them should they dare get near, I would be yours. You _parle-vous_ quicker than I do and we could cut right to the heart of the matter without any confusion.'

Stephen bowed from his seat. To himself he said, 'Brother, I have owned dogs that had better French than you do.' The thought came without malice despite the mean words; Stephen respected Jack's general abilities implicitly: he was, in fact, enjoying the unexpected warmth that sprang from Jack's request for help. Aloud he said, 'I am at your service.'

Stephen had time to brush off his servant's wish to shave him and supervise what little needed to be done for the few sick and injured -- one aged sailor suffering from stones, two men with crushed fingers and cracked ribs, respectively; neither nimble enough to leap out of the way of their guns -- before he returned to look in on his bees. The glass hive hummed quietly, life made audible and soothing; perhaps, thought Stephen, to the giant whales a ship might hum so. Perhaps they would produce a thick comb of honey and Stephen looked forward to the morning when he presented it to Jack. A hesitant tap at the door brought him from a future sunny day, and he called out, 'Come in.'

The door remained closed. 'The captain requests your company on deck, sir.'

Stephen opened the door himself to find the smallest midshipman in the act of turning away. 'Beg pardon, sir; three ships off the larboard bow. They might be pirates! They look like pirates. Are there French pirates?'

'Absolutely. They plunder more treasure than any other kind.'

'Treasure, sir?'

'When they take time from marauding up and down every coast they encounter murdering children, yes. They are all of them rich as kings.'

He glowed with joyous awe as he looked up at Stephen, who carefully nudged a bee from his chin, and then the boy looked behind him into the after-cabin with something like horror on his face. Before Stephen could say, 'Let us not keep the captain waiting -- lead the way, Mr Randall', the boy was nearly on deck.

'Stephen, there you are,' said Jack. The boy Randall stood near Mr Simmons, obviously delighted to be in such company, but also wary of Stephen. Jack nodded to three small, dirty boats bobbing off the larboard bow. 'They came armed with a three-pounder on the sloop and let fly French colors. I think they mean to engage us.'

'Shall we beat to quarters?'

'No, Mr Simmons, but I would like to work the long nines. Clear the deck and run 'em out.' He looked cheerful. 'We may have to fire across their bows.'

Young Randall brightened visibly at the prospect. Stephen asked, 'Have they cried out? Do they wish to speak?'

'Nothing so literate I can make 'em out. What would they want with our pigs?'

Stephen leaned over the rail and asked the foremost boat its purpose and got a drunken harangue on the uncouth ways of the English, how hideous their woman and ugly their children, their intimacy with farm animals. The crew added their own derisive cheers when their leader declared they were privateers authorized to take whatever enemy ship they saw fit. Stephen glanced at Jack. 'They say they are privateers and are indeed sincere in their intention to engage us.'

'Can you convey to them the folly of their course? A nicety of form, as it were.' Jack lowered his voice. 'I prefer not to murder them outright.'

Stephen bespoke them again. The leader swayed in the bow of his boat; admittedly his dialect and idioms made him difficult to understand, and he was profoundly drunk. He was insulted on his brother's behalf: Jean-Claude ran the semaphore-station at Cap Lvy; his pinkie had been torn from his left hand in the attack, and now he, Philippe, wanted revenge. Behind Stephen the crew of the _Lively_ went about their duty, readying the long nines; Stephen noticed Jack and Bonden among the gun crews. He saw also the men behind fearless Philippe cheered their leader with less enthusiasm; some of the more intelligent specimens acquired the particular look of sudden dismayed sobriety brought on by disaster.

'Je te vois!' cried Philippe. He likened Jack's guns to tired old whores who consorted with dogs, no match for his beloved gun, like a darling daughter of Napoleon himself.

Stephen straightened at that and stared at the fool, and focusing all his disdain he told him coldly to turn around, leave now, or face the consequences. While the upstart Bonaparte wreaked havoc within France and without, Monsieur Philippe had no business threatening anyone in his name.

'What shall it be, Stephen?' asked Jack. 'Will they cut along, or must we send them packing? Except for that fellow, they look ready to run.'

'Give them a moment and his crew will overpower him themselves,' said Stephen. 'You have made your point well enough, apparently.' He gestured to the lazy curl of smoke from the slow match wafting over the rail. Philippe leapt angrily in place, froth flecking his great, black moustache as he alternately hurled insults at the _Lively_ 's captain and struck his own men about the head.

'Oh, I intend to make the point far more emphatically.'

Stephen saw a point of bright light from the corner of his eye and then nothing for a long, gray moment. His bees were with him in the dusk, a soft serenade that thinned abruptly and rose in pitch until he recognized the sound of childish screaming. He was on the deck of the _Lively_ , dazed but unhurt; Mr Simmons held the boy nearby, blood lurid on the clean blue of their jackets. Jack was roaring, the long nines hardly as loud, and when Stephen got to his feet he saw Philippe's boat broken, her crew scattered in the water, most struggling to the remaining boats.

Jack stood with his back to Stephen. He turned his head, and Stephen nodded to him. 'Stephen! Mr Randall is hurt.'

'So I see.' He brushed at his shirt, felt his glasses still upon his face, and went to the boy.

'Vast firing!' ordered Jack. To Bonden, captaining the next gun, Jack said, 'Give 'em one more across their bow.' Soon as his shot went howling over the second boat so close that some of her crew jumped into the ocean, Jack crouched over his gun. 'Fire!' He whipped the slow match over the touch hole and he leapt aside as the gun reared back. The final ball flew just above the last boat's stern.

Near the rail, splintered by a three-pound ball, Stephen tended young Randall; the boy's face was a scarlet mask and he cried piteously. Mr Simmons had summoned the boy's father who now cradled him. As Jack approached Simmons said, 'Sir. Shall we finish them off?'

'How's the boy?'

Stephen looked up. 'Scratched, insulted, but fundamentally whole.' He raised his voice over renewed howls from the boy. 'The young of any species make a fuss when distressed. When they are quiet, aye, that is the time to worry.' To the boy he said, 'Hush, _acushla_. The captain is standing right here.' Drawing in a slobbery breath, Mr Randall gulped and stopped his noise, abashed and hiccupping wetly.

'And you?' Jack laid his hand on Stephen's shoulder. 'Are you fundamentally whole?'

'Dusty,' he admitted. 'I was shoved hard enough to measure my length on your deck but no worse than that.'

'My decks are not dusty.'

'The privateers. What has become of them?'

Jack spared them a glance. 'A few of the rascals copped it, but there are two sorry and very full boats pulling for shore.' He cast a critical eye at the cloudless horizon. 'They might make it if they bail quickly enough.'

Stephen nodded and returned his attention to his patient. 'I congratulate you, Mr Randall. You were nearly murdered by French pirates.'

'M-murdered?'

'Only nearly,' Stephen assured him. 'You will be fit and lively as ever you were in no time at all, and with a perfectly horrible scar.'

'Honestly, sir?' Josiah Randall sniffed and sat up straighter in his father's lap. 'A horrible pirate scar? Really?'

'The best one in the fleet,' promised Stephen.

Shortly after he finished suturing Mr Randall's pirate scar, the guns awoke and thundered, pulverizing French masonry no doubt. The storm ended soon enough, and Stephen, caught by his servant, Paris, and finally scraped reasonably clean, found the after-cabin quiet but for the bees. He thought on the odd moment of twilight he suffered on the deck: odd that he heard bees. Only now had he remembered, after the melee, after the noise, that there had been fear: fear for himself, for Jack. He knew the discharge of a gun intimately well, but instead of some phantom of fear he had envisioned his bees, the bees Jack disliked yet worked so hard to tolerate for Stephen's sake.

Several bees lit upon his person, tiny feet on his finger, on his cheekbone. He heard Jack outside the door and decided to join him, perhaps chivvy Killick into making another pot of coffee or breaking out the claret. He shooed them all gently away, but was stung on his cheek when he moved too quickly, and so when he joined Jack at the table, his cheek throbbed.

'I sent Killick about his business to hustle some -- Stephen, is that a bee-sting?'

'The wretched beast disliked my haste.' Stephen sat, still displeased.

Jack leaned forward and brushed it tenderly. 'I see no stinger.'

'It is nothing.'

Jack's fingertip on his face was a kiss, and Stephen shivered. 'It is not; it is quite a hole, and I am so very sorry.'

 


End file.
